Film censor board member Vani Tripathi Tikoo talks about why she has a problem with “censoring” in India in an exclusive chat with Brut at Festival de Cannes 2022. #Cannes2022
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00If we will objectify women, we will not certify ourselves.
00:07What about the censor work? Do you think we should be little, you know, little better ones to accept globally?
00:14I think we have come a long way at the Central Board of Film Certification.
00:18I have a problem with the word censor. It's a very old term.
00:221935, the British used to use this term to censor information because India was a British colony.
00:27Now we are in the business of certification and I think we have been very progressive in the past few years.
00:33If you look at the whole controversy around Padmavath and the way the present board, which I am a part of, handled it.
00:39Also, increasingly cinema is becoming robust and very concurrent with what is happening in the country, whether it's crime or it's women.
00:48Objectification of women is one thing we are very, very strict about.
00:52And I think I'm very proud to say that less and less item numbers are seen today because the board has taken a position that if you will objectify women, we will not certify them.
01:02Do you think Indian actors and actresses are now getting more accepted globally?
01:07No, I think the time is right that Indian filmmakers and actors are getting a lot of attention.
01:12Also, I think Cannes is the correct film festival, correct platform for independent cinema.
01:20And increasingly, Indian filmmakers, if you remember Masaan and Lunchbox were two films which were very talked about in recent times.
01:30And I think then onwards, independent filmmakers from India have been making a huge mark at the festival every year.
01:36Yes, in the competition for some time, we've not been there, but I think we're getting there soon.
01:40There's a constant debate between Hindi cinema and South cinema. Which industry is progressive?
01:47I think all cinema is Indian cinema. We shouldn't get into the binaries of language and distinguish one cinema from the other.
01:55I think linguistic barriers will only make the whole business of cinema more myopic.
02:01We shouldn't be saying North versus South. It's all Indian cinema.
02:05As we say cinema of India, we are standing in Cannes and languages don't matter.
02:11It's the cinema from the whole country called India matters.
02:14If you look at RRR, KGF, Bahubali, they've changed the narrative.
02:18If they can work for a Hindi audience, and so many Hindi films get made down South, I think the narrative is more holistic.